Taiwan's betel nut girl culture | Tobie Openshaw | TEDxMonga

Photographer and documentary filmmaker Tobie Openshaw shares his unique and privileged view into Taiwan's famous "binlang beauties" - the scantily-clad girls who make their living selling betel nuts from glass booths on the roadside. In this fascinating talk, he also confronts some often-held assumptions.

攝影師兼記錄片拍攝者，歐陽峰Tobie對於台灣最具爭議性的現象－－檳榔西施文化，分享了獨特而深入的觀點。 Dec 9, 2010 TEDxMonga - Hearts and Minds http://www.tedxmonga.com

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

A female colleague asked me the other day,

"What dose it feel like to know
that people think you are a weirdo?"

(Laughter)

And not wanting to admit that I didn't
know people thought I was a weirdo,

I said: "Well, I think that weirdos
look at the world in a different way,

and they try to see a little bit behind
that which everybody accepts."

So if that's the definition of a weirdo,
then I'm happy to be called one.

So, I arrived in Taiwan 12 years ago,

and I learned about
the thing called "betel nut."

And I was really surprised
and interested in this

because I'd never come
across anything like this before.

And, for the uninitiated, betel nut
is in fact a fruit, it's not a nut.

It grows on the areca palm tree.

And it actually is chewed all over Asia.

It's very popular and very
common all over Asia.

It is a stimulant.

It contains something called arecoline,
which gives you a little bit of a rush.

Chewing a betel nut is little bit like

drinking three cups of espresso coffee
immediately after each other.

It needs to be activated,

so it gets wrapped in a leaf
which gives it some taste,

and then on the inside of the leaf
they put some paste -

a white lime paste which actually
activates the active ingredients.

So, this then is a product
which doesn't look like very much.

So how do you sell this product
to people who are driving by your store?

Right?

You could stand out there
and wave your betel nut

but I don't think that
is going to work, all right?

(Laughter)

You could put some
bright lights on your store,

but hey, every store in Taiwan
has bright lights on it,

so that's not going to
help very much either.

So, then somebody about
somewhere around the 1980s,

hit on the idea of getting a pretty girl
wearing a skimpy outfit

to sit by the roadside
in your store with the bright lights

and entice passing drivers to come into -
and stop, and buy your betel nut.

So, when I arrived in Taiwan,

and I saw these glass boxes
by the side of the road

with pretty girls sitting inside,

what did I think?

"Are they prostitutes?"

(Laughter)

"Is it so open here in Taiwan?"

(Laughter)

That was - Obviously everybody
has that thought at first.

But I asked my foreigner friends:
"What is the story here?"

They say, "No, no,
they just sell betel nut,

they sell drinks, and they sell
cigarettes, and nothing else."

I'm like, "Oh yeah, really. Right."

(Laughter) OK.

And when I asked the locals,

they all said: "Oh, bad girls, bad girls.

Don't even think about it.
Don't even talk about it. OK?

No. They will do all kinds of things
in those betel nut stores of theirs."

But then I started looking
at this, and I thought,

"How does it work? I don't understand.

How can a girl sitting in a glass box
by the side of the road brightly lit

actually engage in sexual activity?"

It doesn't actually make sense.

And so I thought I wanted
to find out more about this.

Being a documentary filmmaker,
I'm interested in how things work

and how people think
and how people operate

what's going on in the world.

And so I decided I'm going
to look at this subject, research it,

find out more about it,

and try and tell this interesting
and fascinating and totally unique story.

But, as any filmmaker will tell you,

access to your subject
is the most important thing.

And I found it very, very difficult
to connect up with the betel nut girls.

They did not want to talk to me.

They would generally -

They actually don't want to
talk to anybody.

They don't want to be photographed.

They say things like:
"It's a shameful job."

They say things like: "My boss won't
let you take photos of me or talk to me."

Or they say: "My parents or my family
doesn't know that I do this job."

But finally I met one girl
by the name of Jane.

At that time she was called Ada,

as Taiwanese girls sometimes do,
they change their names.

And she was the first girl to agree
for me to take her photo,

to interview her,
to tape her, to record her.

And it was really a breakthrough for me.

And I found that she was,
in many ways, a typical betel nut girl -

dropped out of school; was doing
this job for several years already,

complained about being
harassed by men, things like that.

But in many ways she was also
against expectations.

She was very smart,
and she spoke really well.

And she had a very good unstanding

about exactly what it is that she's doing.

And in that way she helped
to introduce me to this business.

And that, in fact, is one of
the very first photos I ever took

of a betel nut girl with her consent.

So,
(Laughter)

and that's about 2003 or 2004.

So I managed to work out a strategy

for dealing with the betel nut girls,
getting them to talk to me.

I would become a customer first.

I would buy coffee and cigarettes
from them, chit-chat,

and then if I'd get a feeling
that they would be interested to talk,

I'd get a female, Chinese-speaking
assistant to go with me,

and we go and chat to them
and explain to them what I do.

And I found that when you
approach them in that way,

that all of us, everyone here
has a story to tell.

that's why we are here today, right?
because we have a story to tell.

And if you show a genuine
interest in someone's story,

they will generally
be happy to tell it to you.

So I wanted to make a film.
I couldn't get funding for it.

The government wouldn't
give money for a film

that promotes this part
of the Taiwanese culture.

But eventually it sort of transformed
itself into a photography project.

2007, I had my first photo exhibition.

And for some reason, that photo
exhibition just sort of hit a nerve.

And the media picked it up
and went crazy about it.

This foreigner, being in Taiwan,
and looking at betel nut girls,

and showing Taiwanese people
something about their culture,

and looking at it in a different way,

the girls became very famous,

and the stores down the road complained
that I hadn't photographed their girls,

because these ones are getting more money.

(Laughter)

And so it went.

Discovery did a program on them,

and National Geographic did some stuff,

and some of them ended up on TV shows.

And it was really just interesting.

As I say, it really just hit a nerve.

I started to get a very good idea

about what people in general
think betel nut girls are,

and what the realities are.

And I found that
they are different things.

And I found that the betel nut girl issue

has many, many layers;

it has many, many sides;

there are no simple and clear answers.

And those are the kinds of things
that I enjoy dealing with,

and having conversations about.

It's all about the conversation.

So let's see, what is
the betel nut girls business in?

Is it prostitution?

Is it girls who actually
are just prostitutes?

Is the business run by gangsters?

The girls are all exhibitionists?
They all like to show off?

Or not?

Is it some deep-seated and long-running
culture expression in Taiwan?

How about female exploitation?

Are these girls exploited or are they not?

On the scale of exploitation
that perhaps all of us have to deal with,

where do they fall?

Is it maybe a form of female
empowerment? Who knows?

Is it just a blight on the landscape
and a heath issue, a health problem?

Is it just a job like any other?

Or is it actually a form of urban art?

So, the answer lies somewhere
along in that whole spectrum.

So let's take the first one, prostitution.

As I mentioned,

doing business in a glass cage
is probably not going to actually happen.

But I do believe that, in general,

the business is not, in fact,
around prostitution.

The business is around a pretty girl
sitting in a glass cage

and selling betel nuts girls -
betel nut, um -

(Laughter)

Freudian slip there -

(Laughter)

etc., to passing motorists.

Is it a business run by gangsters?

Well, if you asked to take
some of those bosses' photos,

they'll say: "Yeah,
but just don't show my face."

So yes, there are certain elements.

But I find these days, more and more,
the stores are actually run by women.

So this woman in red is Ada's former boss.

And she runs the business
completely by herself

together with their Indonesian maid
who helps to prepare the betel nut there.

Some of the other women like May,
for instance, manages the store.

She manages three other girls
and the store.

The boss almost never comes there.

She's totally in charge
of the place there.

Do the girls have some
element of exhibitionism to them?

So, for sure, girls like to dress sexy.

They have competitions
with each other to be sexy.

So sometimes, in some places,
in some areas they will look like this,

or they would look like this.

And then all the girls
in the street complain

because they have to compete against that.

And they don't like it, all right?

This, for instance, was quite
an interesting incident.

One of the few times that I saw

really sort of overt behavior
from a betel nut girl,

because normally they're very prim.

They're sexily dressed
but their behavior is very prim.

This was during a typhoon
about three or four years ago.

The girls were actually working
in the middle of it.

I stopped and took photos.
It was amazing.

This girl was like jumping
up and down all the time,

and the wind's catching
her dress, lifting it up.

After two or three times I'm like,

"You're doing it on purpose,
aren't you? I could tell."

(Laughter)

But, generally speaking, as I say,
the manner is actually quite prim.

It's that balance between being sexy
and yet being somehow innocent

that I think men find interesting too.

How about culture?

So Taiwan,

or betel nut has been used
in Taiwan for hundreds of years

by the Aboriginal people,

it's a part of their love rituals,
marriage rituals,

and also just simply
hospitality, you know.

When somebody visits your home,
you are supposed to give them betel nut.

And there has been some research done.

My friend Daniel did his PhD.

And he had some really
interesting information about

during the Japanese period, for instance,

betel nut was completely
eradicated in Taiwan.

Only the Aboriginal people
could have one or two trees in their area

to keep going

because the Japanese
wanted to stamp out this habit.

But after the Japanese left,
there was a resurgence in betel nut.

And it became, to some extent, a very
Taiwanese thing to chew betel nut.

It became part of the Taiwanese culture.

And even more recently, we have
this idea of "Tai-Ke," right?

which is very Taiwanese.

It's very earthy; it's very down-to-earth.

Of course, there's a large group
of people who call it low class.

But people like this guy, for instance,

he's the chairman of the betel nut
business association in Taoyuan area.

I interviewed him, also from my phone.

And yeah, he's very typical of that very
go-getter, businessman kind of guy,

and who's prompting
his business in everything

and very proud of being Taiwanese.

The girls themselves have a certain
manner which I find quite interesting.

Just a little bit of idea from the way
they talk, and the way they react.

(Video) (Chatter)

(Video ends)

This is just to show again

that the betel nut girls can sometimes
wear very little clothes

but can actually be shy.

And it's also about the boundaries
that they set up for themselves.

I found that these girls
very strict, very clear

about what they're prepared to show,

and what they're prepared to do,

and what they're not.

And for instance,

Ada, one day, came out
of her store when I stopped,

and she was wearing her usual
pretty see-through top,

so you could see her bra,
but with a short skirt.

And when she stepped out, the wind
caught her skirt and sort of blew it up.

And I thought, you know, nothing of it,

but she was so ashamed,

she crouched down
with her face in her hands

because she was so embarrassed.

I was really surprised by this,

but I realized that there was
a boundary that had been crossed

in that moment being I stopped there,

and her skirt blew up
so that one could see her underwear.

And so I found that really interesting.

The girls have to deal with things like
harassment from customers, for sure.

The guys will talk to them, they'll
try to get them to go out with them,

things like that,

or will try to touch them sometimes.

And also, occasionally,
some of the girls complain

that guys will stop their cars and will
actually expose themselves to the girls.

So one of the girls, Shao Wen,
has this board on her wall,

so she will write the registration number

of any cars of any guys
that give her trouble

so that next time when they come,
she just doesn't go out of her stand.

Most of the stores
also have security cameras.

And the word on the street is,

if you give a betel nut girl trouble,
her boss will see to you.

(Laughter) And then -

Shao Wen, who actually
also owns her own store,

also has something else that she can use
in case anybody gets frisky,

though she does say
she's never had to use it.

But then I also like to show
a little bit more closely sometimes,

show the girl and give you
the opportunity to stop and look,

because normally
you'd just drive past, right?

All your interactions
with betel nut girl would be fleeting,

would be just driving past -

those of you who don't buy betel nuts
from betel nut girls.

So just looking at her
and seeing this girl,

this is like two o'clock in the morning,

and you can see
the hours are getting long.

It tells you something, it shows you
something about the person.

Then, others, for instance,

you can see there's a friendliness,
there's a happiness -

I have not met any betel nut girls

who complain about
being coerced into doing this job

or coerced into wearing
clothes in a particular way.

The turnover in the stores is very high.

If she doesn't like what her boss
wants her to do, then she just goes.

She goes to the next store.

There's not a problem with that.

OK, about the health issue,

I would just like to say very clearly

that chewing betel nut
is not good for your health.

It's a very strong part

of getting esophageal and mouth cancer

for people who use it a lot.

You do have to chew it a lot.

It's not like you chew one and you
are going to have cancer tomorrow.

And especially when combined with
cigarettes, it's definitely a major issue.

So in that part I want to say very clearly

that I support the troops
but I don't support the war.

My issue is about the girls.

And most importantly then,

I just want to say

when you look at the girl's
interaction with the customers there ...

girls getting bored...

Oh, of course, I always take
some photos to the girls

to show them or to give to them.

They like that.

And - just going to skip through -

OK.

And so, I think the conclusion
I want to come to

is that this business
has many, many layers,

and just as with life.

Somebody asked me before I started,
when I was preparing for this,

they said, "So, what is
this idea worth spreading?"

You know, the TED
"ideas worth spreading."

"What is the idea worth spreading
about the betel nut girls of Taiwan?"

I thought that's actually
a very good question.

And so what I want to say is
that in today's world,

we are living in a world
that is increasingly polarized.

We are constantly being told
that things are black or white.

With the information age,
we have more and more information,

but somehow the conversation
is getting lost,

the nuances is getting lost.

So, what I do with the betel nut girls
is to look at all the layers -

realize that there's a spectrum
from black to white

on all those issues that I mentioned.

And it's not all good and all bad
on any one of those.

And I think if we can keep
the conversation going -

I have people come to me and say:

"I think you should stop
taking photos of betel nut girls

because it's a bad image for Taiwan"
or "bad for them" or whatever it is,

I'm happy to be part of that conversation.

That conversation doesn't have to end.

And while we are having conversations,

we can find the best solutions

to the problems that face us
like climate change,

like leaking government information,

like going to war, you know,

all the things we are dealing with today.

Because while you
are having a conversation,

while you are talking,
you cannot swing a sword.

So, I'd like to invite all of you
to consider the grey areas.

Consider all the lovely layers
that there are in the world

and not just accept
the given on any one side.

And let's all be "weirdos" together.

Thank you.

(Applause)